1. Field of Invention
This disclosure relates to the field of digital management of insurance underwriting, and more specifically to systems and methods for processing and managing requests for underwriting of insurance contracts.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Underwriting is the process that a financial services provider, such as an insurer, uses to assess the eligibility of a customer to receive a service, such as an insurance contract. Insurance underwriting is the detailed analysis preceding the binding of an insurance contract to determine how much coverage (if any) the customer should receive and at what premiums. The analysis may take into account a wide range of information concerning the customer's exposure to a wide variety of risks covered by the insurance. The underwriting process is crucial to an insurance provider's evaluation of whether taking on a particular risk—in exchange for collecting premium payments—will be profitable in the long run.
Typically an insurance underwriter is an individual who is given a letter of authority by his or her employer, an insurance carrier. The letter of authority defines the range of contract parameters for which the underwriter is authorized to quote or to bind the carrier to an insurance contract. For example, the underwriter may be permitted to offer property and casualty coverage on behalf of the carrier only up to a cap of $1M but not beyond. Or, the underwriter may be authorized to offer property and casualty coverage on behalf of the carrier to retail clothing businesses, but not to a construction business whose daily operations are considerably more hazardous.
An underwriter's letter of authority is typically a physical typed or printed paper letter setting forth the underwriting criteria that a case must meet for the underwriter to have binding authority. It is up to the underwriter to know the limits of his or her own authority as set forth in that letter, and to enforce those limits against the parameters of each submission they are given to underwrite. This process is error-prone, exposing carriers to risk and potential losses should an underwriter exceed his or her authority in binding an insurance contract.